Last of the List

When Cyrus arrived almost a month ago, she had a list of ‘most wanted’ things to see and do.

We’ve worked her way through most of them - 

going to the Strawberry Festival, SB Zoo, LA Natural History Museum, SB wharf, Sea Center and a bunch of local thrift stores, plus working on crochet, embroidery, 

Cyrus’ second finished Wildflower. Hoping to make them into pillows before Saturday.

acquiring new plants and acclimating Coco Chai to her new home. (We didn’t get to weaving and spinning. Guess she’ll have to come back again!)

Today we knocked a couple more off the list - 

walking on the beach and watching the sun set over the ocean. 

Thursday we’re going to Gardens of the World in Thousand Oaks and taking one of her (beautiful!) thrifted dresses to Pop’s favorite tailor for alterations. 

Friday she’s packing (she’s going to need a second suitcase! 😜😂) and Saturday she flies home. 

This month has gone too fast!

On A Roll

Cyrus was on a roll today, finishing her first Wildflower embroidery piece and starting the second. 

She originally planned to make a quilted wallhanging using all 4 stick-and-stitch patterns but then I mentioned making a pillow(s)… we’ll see what she decides as we get closer to her goodbye date. 

Coco is helping…

I’d planned to work just a short time on Wildflower, maybe get the horizontal sashing sewn on, but we were talking and stitching and having fun so I kept going. 

I have a hard time lining up vertical sashings across edge-to-edge horizontal strips. This time I measured each section and drew corresponding lines on the long strips, then carefully pinned it together like I was matching seams. It worked! 

It might not be exactly-exact but it’s closer than I’ve ever gotten before. Hooray! (Am I the last person to figure this out? Does everyone already do this?? 😂)

This is going to be a wallhanging and at 42.5” it’s as big as it needs to be, so I’m leaving off the outer border and calling it done. Ish. Hoping to start the embroidered critters tomorrow.

Who Reads Directions??

Decided to actually read the Wildflower instructions, a day after I trimmed all 16 blocks to the wrong size. Oops! Fortunately I made them too big rather than too small, so it was an easy, but time-consuming fix.

My second favorite Stripology ruler

Also remembered I had a (much!) better square-up tool. The embroidery’s knots make the block surface uneven and yesterday’s ruler wobbled like crazy. Definitely not fun while cutting. The Stripology ruler made it much safer and easier. 

Cyrus helped me put these in order before I sewed the first round of sashing. Hoping to finish the horizontal sashing, and maybe the outer borders, tomorrow.

Speaking of Cyrus - I think she’s hooked on embroidery again. (She did a lot when she was younger.) I gave her one of the leftover stick-and-stitch patterns, then let her rummage through my two bins of embroidery stuff for thread and tools. She worked on this one most of the evening and wants us to spend tomorrow stitching together. I can definitely do that!*

* Found several partially finished stitchery projects during the rummage, so now I have more things to work on during TV time. 

Wildflowers

Got the bug to work on this again, 

so trimmed all the squares to 9.5” - some were too wonky to fit the original 10” goal. 

Planning to cut the sashing tomorrow and start putting it all together. 

Not much left over! Looking forward to seeing how the little garden critters look on the cornerstones. 

Counting Down

We’re sadly counting down the days until Leia (this Sunday) and Cyrus (next Saturday) leave us. Leia is on summer break, kinda - she’s taking five(!!) on-line summer school classes - and her parents seem to think she should spend time with them too. Silly parents. 

After spending May in California, Cyrus has decided to go back to CO and attend college there. I was really looking forward to having a crafting/baking buddy this fall. 

We’re making the most of our remaining time. Both grand-teens have a list of places they’d like to visit. Today’s choices were Huntington Library (air quality is poor due to local wildfires, so that’s a no), The Getty (long drive, crazy traffic) and our winner - the Santa Barbara Zoo. 

Cyrus really wanted to see the condors but they were off display for habitat clean-up. Her new favorite of the day? 

Big, blue, chonky Victoria Crowned Pigeons. Aren’t they interesting??

Pop is planning to take them to the LA Natural History Museum on Saturday. Cyrus wants to have dinner on the beach and watch the sun set, so maybe Sunday or Monday night? Tuesday’s plan is revisiting her favorite thrift stores. It’ll be interesting to see what else we can cram in. 

Catching Up

We had some spare time Wednesday before our late afternoon flight 

North Spokane location

so we looked up a restaurant Rachel had recommended. 

Frank’s Diner has been a Spokane institution since 1991, serving great food in historic railway cars. (Link has interesting history of the cars)

What we didn’t realize was that there were two diners - one a couple of blocks from our hotel in Downtown and the other 30 minutes away in North Spokane. 

Guess which one we went to…. Oops!

Food was great (crispy deviled eggs are yummmmm), the rail car was fun and we had enough time so I’m glad we went. Next time we’ll try the one in downtown…

 Rhododendron 

Spokane International (GEG) is fairly small. It took us less than 30 minutes to return our rental car (and talk to the return guy for 5 minutes), walk to the opposite end of the airport to check-in, then back across for security and up and around for our gate. 

Granted it was mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, but there was no one in line at the Delta counter, one person ahead of us at security and only 3 other people waiting at our gate. I love small airports!

 Looks rough but we had only mild turbulence 

While we were away, Cyrus sent me (many!) photos of Coco Chai - Coco with Cyrus, Coco making friends with Leia, Coco being adorable.

 Coco Chai Princess Pie

The cat is shy but has gradually warmed up to us… all except for Pop. Maybe it’s his height? (It was his height with Leo’s new dog. Kenai shied away until Pop sat down, then they were best buds.) But tonight Pop was sitting on the couch and look who initiated contact….

Friends at last!

Spokane

We said goodbye to Jac and family today

She had fun getting her pants that dirty

and headed to Spokane. 

 Riverfront Park

We were scheduled to spend another night at the tiny house 

 Hotel views. We could see half the city

but driving to Spokane to sightsee, 

 Clock Tower on Spokane River

then back for the night, 

then to Spokane airport the next morning seemed a bit much (it’s 90 minutes each way…)

 Big(!) busy bumblebee 

So instead, we booked a hotel room close-ish to the airport 

 Lilacs; the wagon handle was a full-sized kids slide; one of many water features

and across the street from two things we really wanted to see this trip - 

Riverfront Park 

 Sampling of art from the park. 

and Spokane Falls. 

 Upper Falls

We walked through the park, admiring the art and water features,

 So many pedestrian bridges!

before getting to the Spokane River

 Lower Falls

and Upper and Lower Spokane Falls. 

 Looking back at Lower Falls

We took a catrillion photos (only slight exaggeration) 

 Our first view of SkyRide capsules

from every angle we could find, 

including the SkyRide capsules (so fun!)

An excellent dinner at PF Changs-

 View from SkyRide

I’m still sad the one near us closed -

 Rotary Fountain, Gesa Pavilion in the background 

then back to our corner room(!) on the 9th floor 

 Hotel carpet was pretty

to watch night fall and the city lights sparkle.

 Gesa Pavilion from our room. The colors kept changing as we watched

We fly home late tomorrow afternoon. 

 We were almost the only people on the ride. 

Looking forward to seeing Cyrus, Leia and Coco, who have been housesitting while we’re gone. 

 Artsy Lower Falls

And also planning our next trip to Spokane. 

 The river after the falls

More of the bazillion photos…